Many drives have died over the last year and a bit. The Tech Report has been torturing SSDs with writes until they drop. Before a full petabyte of data was written, three of the six drives kicked the bucket. They are now at 1500TB of total writes and one of the three survivors, the 240GB Corsair Neutron GTX, dropped out. This was a bit surprising as it was reporting fairly high health when it entered "the petabyte club" aside from a dip in read speeds.

The two remaining drives are the Samsung 840 Pro (256GB) and Kingston HyperX 3K (240GB).

Between those two, the Samsung 840 Pro is given the nod as the Kingston drive lived through uncorrectable errors; meanwhile, the Samsung has yet to report any true errors (only reallocations). Since the test considers a failure to be a whole drive failure, though, the lashings will persist until the final drive gives out (or until Scott Wasson gives up in a glorious sledgehammer apocalypse -- could you imagine if one of them lasted a decade? :3).

Of course, with just one unit from each model, it is difficult to faithfully compare brands with this marathon. While each lasted a ridiculously long time, the worst of the bunch putting up with a whole 2800 full-drive writes, it would not be fair to determine an average lifespan for a given model with one data point each. It is good to suggest that your SSD probably did not die from a defrag run -- but it is still a complete waste of your time and you should never do it.

Introduction, Specifications and Packaging

Introduction:

It seems a lot of folks have been incorporating Silicon Motion's SM2246EN controller into their product lines. We first reviewed the Angelbird SSD wrk, but only in a 512GB capacity. We then reviewed a pair of Corsair Force LX's (256GB and 512GB). ADATA has joined the club with their new Premier SP610 product line, and today we are going to take a look at all available capacities of this new model:

It's fortunate that ADATA was able to sample us a full capacity spread, as this will let us evaluate all shipping SSD capacites that exist for the Silicon Motion SM2246EN controller.

You may already be familiar with the Micron Crucial M550 line of SSDs (if not, familiarize yourself with our full capacity roundup here). Today Micron is pushing their tech further by releasing a new M600 line. The M600's are the first full lineup from Micron to use their 16nm flash (previously only in their MX100 line). Aside from the die shrink, Micron has addressed the glaring issue we noted in our M550 review - that issue being the sharp falloff in write speeds in lower capacities of that line. Their solution is rather innovative, to say the least.

Recall the Samsung 840 EVO's 'TurboWrite' cache, which gave that drive a burst of write speed during short sustained write periods. The 840 EVO accomplished this by each TLC die having a small SLC section of flash memory. All data written passed through this cache, and once full (a few GB, varying with drive capacity), write speed slowed to TLC levels until the host system stopped writing for long enough for the SSD to flush the cached data from SLC to TLC.

The Micron M600 SSD in 2.5" SATA, MSATA, and M.2 form factors.

Micron flips the 'typical' concept of caching methods on its head. It does employ two different types of flash writing (SLC and MLC), but the first big difference is that the SLC is not really cache at all - not in the traditional sense, at least. The M600 controller, coupled with some changes made to Micron's 16nm flash, is able to dynamically change the mode of each flash memory die *on the fly*. For example, the M600 can place most of the individual 16GB (MLC) dies into SLC mode when the SSD is empty. This halves the capacity of each die, but with the added benefit of much faster and more power efficient writes. This means the M600 would really perform more like an SLC-only SSD so long as it was kept less than half full.

As you fill the SSD towards (and beyond) half capacity, the controller incrementally clears the SLC-written data, moving that data onto dies configured to MLC mode. Once empty, the SLC die is switched over to MLC mode, effectively clearing more flash area for the increasing amount of user data to be stored on the SSD. This process repeats over time as the drive is filled, meaning you will see less SLC area available for accelerated writing (see chart above). Writing to the SLC area is also advantageous in mobile devices, as those writes not only occur more quickly, they consume less power in the process:

For those worst case / power user scenarios, here is a graph of what a sustained sequential write to the entire drive area would look like:

Realize this is not typical usage, but if it happened, you would see SLC speeds for the first ~45% of the drive, followed by MLC speeds for another 10%. After the 65% point, the drive is forced to initiate the process of clearing SLC and flipping dies over to MLC, doing so while the host write is still in progress, and therefore resulting in the relatively slow write speed (~50 MB/sec) seen above. Realize that in normal use (i.e. not filling the entire drive at full speed in one go), garbage collection would be able to rearrange data in the background during idle time, meaning write speeds should be near full SLC speed for the majority of the time. Even with the SSD nearly full, there should be at least a few GB of SLC-mode flash available for short bursts of SLC speed writes.

This caching has enabled some increased specs over the prior generation models:

Note the differences in write speeds, particularly in the lower capacity models. The 128GB M550 was limited to 190MB/sec, while the M600 can write at 400MB/sec in SLC mode (which is where it should sit most of the time).

We'll be testing the M600 shortly and will come back with a full evaluation of the SSD as a whole and more specifically how it handles this new tech under real usage scenarios.

It's the first day of IDF, so it's only natural that we see a bunch of non-IDF news start pouring out :). I'll kick them off with a few announcements from HGST. First item up is their new SN100 line of PCIe SSDs:

These are NVMe capable PCIe SSDs, available from 800GB to 3.2TB capacities and in (PCI-based - not SATA) 2.5" as well as half-height PCIe cards.

Next up is an expansion of their HelioSeal (Helium filled) drive line:

Through the use of Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR), HGST can make an even bigger improvement in storage densities. This does not come completely free, as due to the way SMR writes to the disk, it is primarily meant to be a sequential write / random access read storage device. Picture roofing shingles, but for hard drives. The tracks are slightly overlapped as they are written to disk. This increases density greatly, but writting to the middle of a shingled section is not possible without potentially overwriting two shingled tracks simultaneously. Think of it as CD-RW writing, but for hard disks. This tech is primarily geared towards 'cold storage', or data that is not actively being written. Think archival data. The ability to still read that data randomly and on demand makes these drives more appealing than retrieving that same data from tape-based archival methods.

Further details on the above releases is scarce at present, but we will keep you posted on further details as they develop.

The SSD Review has put a quick overview of what they feel are the best SSDs released this summer in several classes, though picking the Intel P3700 PCIe SSD which is not slated for release until the end of September might be considered cheating a bit. It is no surprise that the Samsung 850 Pro is the Enthusiast recommendation or the Crucial MX100 being recommended for those with a tight budget. They also list M.2, mSATA and even USB recommendations so head on over to see the full round up.

"Summer has come and gone, and over the past few months, there have been quite a few SSDs released into the market, and the question of, "Which SSD should I buy?" seems to still come up a lot around forums. Usually, there are some predetermined recommended favorite in each."

Introduction, Specifications and Packaging

Introduction:

We first looked at the Silicon Motion 2246EN controller in our Angelbird SSD wrk review. In that review, we noted the highest sequential performance seen in any SATA SSD reviewed to date. Eager to expand our testing to include additional vendors and capacities, our next review touching on this controller is the Corsair Force LX series of SSDs. The Force LX Series is available in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB capacities, and today we will look at the 256GB and 512GB iterations of this line:

Ok, so the naming might be a bit confusing for those familiar with AMD's video card line of the same name, so you'll have to be sure to include 'SSD' in your searches if you are looking for one of these on the market. Just like AMD handled the RAM, they have again chosen to partner with another company in the creation of a new product:

...and this time that choice was OCZ. As you can see above, the Radeon R7 is a gamer-oriented SSD, which sits right in between the Vertex 460 and the Vector 150 in OCZ's product lineup. The expectation is performance similar to the Vector, but with a slightly lower warranty and GB/day rating. We also see the inclusion of the lower cost 'advanced' Toshiba A19nm MLC flash, which should help with pricing and get this new SSD into the hands of even more gamers.

We have seen the Barefoot 3 controller that AMD used in their first SSD before in OCZ's Vector 150, but not exactly like this. The controller has been optimized to work with Toshiba's 19nm and is clocked slightly higher than the Vertex, though AMD will not say by how much. That may account for the reduction in daily writes to 30GB/day and the warranty period to 4 years but as it is OCZ that is handling the warranty it is hard to determine the exact reasoning at this point. On the plus side the MSRP is also reduced by $28 to $164 which still falls short of reaching the magic $0.50/GB mark. The Tech Report tested the 240GB model here, as with other SSDs you can expect the 120GB to be slightly slower and the 480GB model to perform slightly faster.

"AMD is getting into the storage business. The Radeon R7 SSD combines OCZ's Barefoot 3 controller with Toshiba's 19-nm MLC NAND, custom firmware, and a snazzy new sticker. We take a quick look to see what's what."

The simple look and extra care that went into manufacturing the Angelbird wrk SSDs show that they are serious about breaking into the market. They have launched at a price slightly higher than average for the market but also bring the best sequential reads that Al has seen yet on a SATA drive. Legit Reviews pried the drive open to reveal the Silicon Motion SM2246EN SATA III 6Gbps SSD controller previously seen on Corsair, PNY, ADATA and Transcend SSDs, along with MLC flash and 256MB of DDR3 cache. In Legit Reviews testing of the drive they concluded that you should pick up the 256GB or 512GB model for the extra performance that it brings, you will not be disappointed.

"Angelbird might night be a household name, but the Austrian company has been around in the SSD market for a number of years and has gotten a reputation for having high quality products. When we found out that Angelbird was coming out with a new SSD product like called the SSD wrk we couldn’t wait to get our hands on one of these drives and see what Angelbird has to offer consumers. Read on to find out!"

Introduction, Specifications and Packaging

Introduction:

You might have never heard of Angelbird - until now, that is. Angelbird Technologies GmbH is an SSD maker based out of Vorarlberg, Austria. Their product lines have historically focused around high end and Mac-based products, with a recent arch into portable SSDs (like their SSD2go line). Angelbird is known for their high build quality, and their products are assembled using a technique I can appreciate - vapor phase soldering - (seen here) a technique that puts the least possible thermal stress on the components, as well as ensuring all solder joints are oxygen free. While the vast majority of the their prior products have been build around SandForce controllers, today they have launched a new line, the SSD wrk:

The Angelbird SSD wrk is built around a new (to them) controller, the SM2246EN from Silicon Motion:

Silicon Motion prides themselves on making SSD controllers that deliver good performance at very low power consumption. For those wanting more detail on this particular controller technology, we have a detailed analysis from last August, available at this page.